Dario Caldara and Matteo Iacoviello
The country-specific GPR index reflects automated text-search results of the electronic archives of three U.S newspapers: The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post. For each of the 39 countries, Caldara and Iacoviello calculate the country-specific index by counting the monthly share of all newspaper articles from 1900 to 2020 that both (1) meet the criterion for inclusion in the GPR index and (2) mention the name of the country or major cities of the country. Each country-specific GPR index is then normalized to an average of 100 throughout the entire sample. The resulting indices capture the U.S. perspective on risks posed by, or involving, the country in question.
The search identifies articles containing references to eight categories. Categories 1 through 3 describe searches capturing articles discussing war threats, threats to peace or threats stemming from periods of military buildups, international sanctions or embargoes. Categories 4 and 5 describe searches aimed at capturing articles discussing nuclear threats and terrorist threats. Categories 6 and 7 describe searches of war act articles, which we divide into articles covering the beginning of war. Finally, category 8 covers articles related to terrorist acts.
Based on the search categories above, Caldara and Iacoviello gather cross-country data on GDP and country-specific geopolitical risk spanning 121 years to show that elevated geopolitical risk increases the probability of economic disasters, lowers expected GDP growth, and raises downside risks to GDP growth.
DATA The data are updated for each month around the 10th of the following month.
These data can be used freely with attribution to the authors, the paper, and the website.
See country specific Indices in the regional pages below.